Student-loan debt tops $1 trillion — from WSJ.com by Josh Mitchell and Maya Jackson-Randall

Excerpt:

The amount Americans owe on student loans is far higher than earlier estimates and could lead some consumers to postpone buying homes, potentially slowing the housing recovery, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Total student debt outstanding appears to have surpassed $1 trillion late last year, said officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created in the wake of the financial crisis. That would be roughly 16% higher than an estimate earlier this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

From DSC:
Phrases/words that come to my mind include (which many readers of this blog and my archived website will instantly recognize:

  • Reinventing ourselves
  • Staying relevant /addressing our customers’ needs
  • Innovation
  • Strategy
  • Leadership
  • Vision
  • The business side of higher ed / new business models
  • Game-changing environment
  • Disruption
  • Dangers of the status quo
  • Student-related
  • Future of higher education
  • The Walmart of Education
  • Learning from the Living Room

Addendum on 3/23/12:

 

From DSC:
Arguably, Sal Kahn has become the most famous, influential educator on the planet today — his videos are watched millions of times a day now.  The question — which Eric Schmidt answers in the piece — I couldn’t help but ask was, “Why didn’t this type of innovation come from someone who was working in education at the time of their innovation?”

My thanks to Dr. Kate Byerwalter and her colleagues for passing along this resource.
The tags/associated categories for this posting point out the relevant areas covered.

 

Khan Academy: The future of education?

Also see:

  • Khan Academy: The future of education?
    (CBS News) Sal Khan is a math, science, and history teacher to millions of students, yet none have ever seen his face. Khan is the voice and brains behind Khan Academy, a free online tutoring site that may have gotten your kid out of an algebra bind with its educational how-to videos. Now Khan Academy is going global. Backed by Google, Gates, and other Internet powerhouses, Sal Khan wants to change education worldwide, and his approach is already being tested in some American schools. Sanjay Gupta reports.

From DSC:
A relevant graphic comes to mind with what Sal is trying to achieve with analytics:

i.e. Highly-effective diagnostic tools for the educators and trainers out there!

 

 

iCloud, not the new iPad, is Apple’s real key to the post-PC revolution — from ReadWriteWeb.com by Dan Frommer

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

What makes the iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, and gradually, even the Mac, “post-PC” devices, is the idea that they’re all tied together behind the scenes: Your work, your entertainment, your apps, everything. It’s not that they just replace a PC in your home. It’s that they go beyond what a PC ever offered.

That’s where iCloud comes into play.

Lifelong learning ecosystems!!! A powerful vision for our future [Daniel Christian]

From DSC:
The vision below involves:
(click on the image below to access it)
 

  • The convergence of the telephone, the television, and the computer
  • Cloud-based education stores/marketplaces/exchanges
  • Second screen devices and machine-to-machine communications
  • Social networking/learning
  • Smart classrooms/learning spaces
  • Content recognition/synchronization applications
  • Apps as “channels”
  • Web-based learner profiles
  • Video overlays
  • New business models in higher ed
  • New jobs/needs for the future
  • A new way for employers to hire highly-effective employees/contractors/consultants
  • …and more

 

Click this thumbnail image to access the larger image / vision

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From DSC:
Here are some items related to what I call “Learning from the Living Room” — a trend that continues to develop that involves:

  • Using high-end, personalized, multimedia-based, interactive, team-created content — packed with new reporting tools for better diagnostics/learning analytics — available via a cloud-based “education store”/marketplace/exchange
  • Web-accessible content that’s available 24x7x365
  • The power of social networks/learning
  • Riding the wave of the massive convergence of the computer, the telephone, and the television.

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Smarter TV: Living room as digital hub from Samsung and Microsoft to Apple and Google — from wired.com by Tim Carmody
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
  • In the future, the living room will replace the home office as most households’ home for the stationary personal computer. Instead of printers and mice and other corded accessories, networked appliances and post-PC machines share data with one another and with the cloud. Play and productivity both become decentered; gaming and entertainment might be on a tablet or a television, with recipes at the refrigerator, a shopping list for the smartphone, and an instructional video on the television set. All of these experiences will be coherent, continuous and contextual. And like the personal computer at the height of Pax Wintel, the living room will be a platform characterized by triumphant pluralism.“The thing about the living room is that it’s universal; everyone in the household uses it,” Samsung VP Eric Anderson told me at today’s event. “We know that we’re not going to capture every single member of the household. In my family, my wife and my daughter are Apple, me and my sons are Android,” he noted, pointing out that the majority of devices introduced today can interact with either mobile platform.

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The modern mechanics of app stores: today, tomorrow and connected TV — from guardian.co.uk by Dean Johnson

Excerpt:

What’s next for app stores?
It’s time for each platform to up its game – smart TVs are coming. The small and medium screen experience will shortly be translated to the bigger screen as connectivity and discoverability takes on even greater importance.

Google and Apple will further interweave themselves into our daily lives as iOS and Android seamlessly combine our smartphones and tablets with our new smartTVs. Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) and the programmes themselves will suggest related content, from apps to music to film to books. This must all be presented in an approachable, then browsable manner to encourage additional discovery.

The quest for the perfect meta-data will become increasingly important and voice commands will need to deliver the best search results with the minimum of fuss. This time next year, the battle of the app stores will be fought on the move, on the desktop and on the living room wall.

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Samsung Launches Smart TVs With Gestures, Voice Control — from by Douglas Perry

Excerpt:

A Kinect-like feature is made possible via camera and microphone integration that comes standard with the LED ES7500, LED ES8000 and Plasma E8000 models. According to Samsung, consumers can launch apps such as Facebook or YouTube, or search the web via voice commands. Waving the hand will move the cursor and select links. The TVs integrate a Samsung dual-core processor as well as a new Webkit-based web browser to improve overall performance. The high-end 7500 and 8000 TVs ship with a remote with an integrated touchscreen. A wireless keyboard that is compatible with Samsung’s TVs as well as the Galaxy Tab tablet is sold as an option.

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New TV experiences through companion apps — from moxie pulse

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From DSC:
This is exactly what I was getting at with The Forthcoming Walmart of Education (2008) and it points out, again, that innovation is much faster and stronger in the online world than it is in the face-to-face world. The tools being developed to engage, track, diagnose, and adapt continue to be developed. What may have once been poo-pooed continues to pick up steam. (Christensen, Johnson, & Horn are right on track.) The trend will be towards more team-based endeavors that can be made available at a greatly reduced price. They will be multimedia-based, highly-interactive, and state-of-the-art (technically and pedagogically).

Treating Higher Ed’s ‘Cost Disease’ With Supersize Online Courses — from The Chronicle by Marc Parry

Excerpt (with emphasis from DSC):

Professors should move away from designing foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the basis of “intuition,” she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

“We’re seeing failure rates in these large introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody,” Ms. Thille says. “There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where they start—to be able to successfully complete.”

Her approach brings together faculty subject experts, learning researchers, and software engineers [from DSC — a TEAM-based approach] to build open online courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills. As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

From DSC:
Such learner profiles will most likely reside in the cloud and eventually standards will be established to insert new data into these profiles. The access to view/edit these profiles will be controlled by the individual learners (hopefully!).  What if learners could selectively grant corporations access to this type of profile as their new resume?

For items concerning team-based approaches, see this recording (June 2009) as well as this collection of items.

For items concerning consortia and pooling resources, see here and here.

 

 

Google to Launch TV Service — from Mashable.com by Todd Wasserman

100 million Americans watch online video every day — from sitetrail.com by Anthony West

How to build 50,000 new colleges — from Forbes.com by Michael Horn

Excerpt (with emphasis by DSC):

What this points to is disruption using the technology enabler of online learning. As the article says, “This means that India is not just trying to build thousands of American-style campuses with neat quads. Many of its new schools will be virtual, for-profit, and integrated closely with workplaces. It may, in fact, end up pushing the concept of online education further than any other country. As a result, what India comes up with will not only affect its economic competitiveness in the 21st century. It may become a petri dish for how to build an educational system in the Information Age.”

There is another dynamic pushing India to innovate in and improve online learning in some dramatic ways. According to the article, new schools face shortages of land and instructors. As a result of the first, constructing big campuses to fill the education gap is likely a non-starter. Online learning is critical. As for the second—the system is short roughly 1 million teachers the article says—this means that the country will almost certainly have to push the bounds of today’s online learning systems so that it can scale the impact of great teachers and built robust digital learning systems that embrace adaptive learning and other such advances. Given these pressures, the innovations that emerge from India could be stunning.

 

The future of internet TV [Europe]

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From DSC:
Entertainment, some news, and social media at bat — educational apps on deck.

Daniel Christian - Emerging Technologies and Trends - January 20th 2012 Presentation at Calvin College

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Daniel Christian - Emerging Technologies and Trends - January 20th 2012 Presentation at Calvin College

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From DSC:
In case it’s helpful, clicking on this link or on one of the images above will link you to a recent presentation that I did for an Interim course at Calvin College entitled, “Social Media for Business?”  As the class had already covered a lot of the topics relating to social media, my job was to focus more on some of the recent emerging trends and technologies.  I will continue to keep pulse checking on those technologies which will allow for ubiquitous, mobile (as well as from the living room), 24x7x365, multimedia-based learning.

NOTE:

  • Almost all of the images on the slides are linked up to web-based resources; so if you see something of interest, go ahead and click on that image/slide in order to learn more about that topic/article/etc.

 

 

 

Living room video calling users to surpass 16 million in 2015 — from instat.com

Excerpt:

The video calling market can be divided into three sub-markets depending on the device which is being used to make the call: PCs, Mobile, and living room (digital home) devices.  Living room video calling is a nascent market and currently has a relatively small user base. New NPD In-Stat (www.in-stat) research forecasts that total users will increase from 1.5 million in 2011 to 16.4 million in 2015. Asia Pacific will be the largest market for living room video calling by a significant margin as this is the region with the highest video calling enabled device shipments.

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From DSC:

  1. The massive convergence of the TV, the computer, and the telephone continues
  2. The current model of higher ed has run it’s course — the model is breaking down
  3. The cost of obtaining an education must decrease; new business models are and will continue to come to fruition
  4. One of those business models is what I call “The Forthcoming Walmart of Education
  5. One of the pieces of this “Walmart of Education” will involve “learning from the living room
  6. “Students” will be able to watch one device while interacting with another device (though I could also see everything happening via one device as well)
  7. Learning will likely be more interactive, multimedia-based, available 24x7x365, personalized, customized and backed up by some serious social networking/learning, analytics, artificial intelligence, learning agents, and online-based tutoring
  8. “Textbooks” will flow into the living rooms as well as to tablets, smart phones, and other devices; but they will be more like apps where updates will occur as necessary
  9. Rock-star profs are likely to emerge
  10. Anyway…”stay tuned”

 

Also see:

A Disrupted Higher-Ed System — from The Chronicle by Jeff Selingo

Excerpt:
Just look at the last month:

  • The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it would create MITx, a self-service learning system in which students can take online tests and earn certificates after watching free course materials posted by the university.
  • StraighterLine, which offers self-paced introductory courses online, said that it would give students access to the Collegiate Learning Assessment and other similar tests, allowing them to take results to employers or colleges to demonstrate their proficiency in certain academic areas.
  • Apple introduced three free pieces of software that allow students to download or create textbooks, and that permit instructors to create a digital curriculum in iTunesU.

 

 

Shazam button to appear on traditional TV remotes, as if by magic — from FastCompany.com by Austin Carr

Excerpt:

Shazam’s future involves applying its discovery engine to television and all of the brands that flow through it, says CEO Andrew Fisher.  And it could be as simple as a button on your channel flipper.

 

 

From DSC:
I couldn’t help but think about Maria’s ideas along the lines of the “Learn This” button

Maria Andersen: Where's the "Learn This" Button?

Tagged with:  

From DSC:
Some items that caught my eye (so far) from CES 2012:

  • CES 2012: The convergence of TV and mobile platforms — from readwriteweb.com by Dan Rowinski
    …mobile operating systems are on a path to fundamentally change how content is delivered.
    .
  • Prepare yourself: Kinect is coming to Windows Feb. 1 — from Mashable.com by Sarah Kessler
    .
  • LG unveils giant 84″ TV with voice, gesture control — from Mashable.com by Samantha Murphy

    .
  • Introducing The MakerBot Replicator™
    January 10, 2012 (Brooklyn, NY) – MakerBot Industries is excited to announce the launch of its latest product, The MakerBot Replicator™, which will debut at CES in Las Vegas, NV on Tuesday, January 10th.  The MakerBot Replicator™ is the ultimate personal 3D printer, with MakerBot Dualstrusion™ (2-color printing) and a bigger printing footprint, giving you the superpower to print things BIG! Assembled in Brooklyn by skilled technicians, the MakerBot Replicator™ is ready within minutes to start printing right out of the box. Starting at $1749, The MakerBot Replicator™ is an affordable, open source 3D printer that is compact enough to sit on your desktop. Want to print in two colors? Choose the Dualstrusion™ option!
    .
  • USA Network taps Yap.tv for branded social TV app
    Yap.tv said the deal will make it the first independent social TV developer to create a custom-branded version of its app for the iPad and iPhone for a major network.??
    NEW YORK – NBCUniversal’s USA Network has partnered with Yap.tv, a maker of a social TV guide app for mobile devices, to launch a USA-branded app for its shows and fans as it and other channels continue to expand the use of social media to reach and engage viewers.
    .
  • Samsung unveils a motion-controlled TV and the U.S. Galaxy Note [PICS]— from Mashable.com by Sarah Kessler
    During its keynote address at CES on Monday, Samsung unveiled a connected TV with voice and gesture recognition, WiFi-enabled cameras and its thinnest ultrabook yet. It also introduced its Galaxy Note smartphone to the U.S. for the first time.

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  • Coincident announces ScreenSync TV Technology — from marketwatch.com
    New solution allows companies to create interactive experiences for viewers that synchronize their tablets with shows they are watching on their televisions
    .
    Also see:
    .

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Dragon TV – Now at your service — from Nuance.com

Excerpt:

Finding ‘what’s on’ television – not the easiest experience with today’s expansive channel options and a non-intuitive means for searching for what you want. Click, click, click, click until you just give up!

 

 
Those days are now over thanks to Dragon TV! Just tell Dragon TV what you want to watch and it delivers it instantly! Really, it’s that simple.

Just say…

  • “Go to AMC”
  • “What’s on Sundance Channel at 9 p.m. tonight?”
  • “When is Breaking Bad on?”
  • “I want to watch VH1 Classics”
  • “Find movies with Peter Sellers”
© 2024 | Daniel Christian